


Heaven Sure Ain't Like It Is In The Brochure

by righteousbros



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Barebacking, Bottom Sam, Brother Feels, Getting Together, Heaven, M/M, Memories, Past Character Death, Post-Season/Series 09, Rimming, Soulmates, Spit As Lube, Top Dean
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 04:45:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2568644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/righteousbros/pseuds/righteousbros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Season 9 Finale.  In this AU, Dean killed Metatron and never became a demon.  Instead, he and Sam got Cain to take the Mark back and the Winchesters went back to doing what they do best - saving people and hunting things.  However, their supposedly easy salt and burn goes bad and the boys wake up in Heaven.  Castiel, acting as their angelic guide, informs them that because they're soulmates they get to share a heaven.  All they have to do is find a place that they can both agree on, which proves to be easier said than done.  They travel down the Axis Mundi together, stopping along the way to revisit some of the places from their shared past and the bittersweet memories that they hold.  Dean is worried that this little trip down memory lane is going to dredge up some uncomfortable truths that he'd just as well let lie.  But, as anxious as he is about what their memories will reveal, he figures he'd be willing to deal with just about anything for the chance to spend his afterlife with Sam.  As he soon finds out however, just because it's Heaven doesn't mean that it's going to be easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Original Art by Electriclita <3

 

No one was more surprised than Dean Winchester was when he found out he’d gotten into Heaven.  
  
At first, Dean didn’t know where the hell they were or how they’d gotten there.  One minute he and Sam were fighting off a vengeful spirit that had taken control of a Peterbilt tractor trailer. The next minute he woke up in the driver’s seat of his Impala in the middle of a long dark road. Sam was slumped against the seat beside him, eyes closed and mouth parted in sleep.  There were no road signs or landmarks to note their location, and no telling if whatever force that dropped them there was friend or foe.  But those concerns would have to wait.  Dean had bigger priorities at the moment.  
  
“Sam?” he hoarsed out, trying to shake his brother awake. His body rebelled against the movement, his limbs leaden and his head spinning. “Sammy? You okay?”  
  
Sam blinked awake and straightened up in his seat, looking around himself in bewilderment. “Dean? What happened? Where are we?”  
  
“Don’t know.” Dean rubbed his forehead, trying to make himself focus, make his heart start working again. Wherever they were, he was in one piece and so was Sam. As long as that remained constant they could figure the rest out. He looked around, squinting into the inky darkness. “I don’t see any road signs do you?”  
  
Sam rolled down his window and stuck his head out. A second later he was staring in shock, mouth falling open. Blindly he reached over, hand shaking, fumbling for the front of Dean’s shirt. “D-Dean. We…we didn’t make it.”  
  
“What?” Fear sliced into Dean like a razor sharp shard of glass. His first reaction was his old standby - denial. “What the hell do you mean? Of course we made it. We’re sitting here aren’t we?”  
  
“Yeah, here. Look around, man! We’ve been here before.” Sam pointed out at the road ahead of him. “What did Cas call it? The Axis Mundi? It’s the road through Heaven, Dean. Heaven! I think…I think we died.”  
  
Dean looked around. Yeah okay, maybe the trees looked a little familiar.  Maybe the road ahead of them reminded him a little of the wild goose chase Zachariah had sent them on. But it couldn’t be, because that meant... no. _No!_   It wasn’t true. “Look at us!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms wide, desperation clawing its way up his throat. “We’re fine!”  
  
“Exactly! That’s the problem. Dude, don’t you remember? Before we ended up here we were definitely not fine. You had a...a hole in your chest.” Sam swallowed hard, sat back in his seat. He started down at his lap, jaw muscles tense. “You died, Dean,” he said, grief weighing down each word. “We died.”  
  
That's when the truth of their situation started to finally sink in. 

If Dean were to be honest with himself, he did remember bits and pieces of the fight but not much of how it had ended. Snippets of time flickered through his mind in a disjointed horror show. A flash of lights. The roar of a motor from the truck bearing down on them. Blood, bone, steel, and pain. Sam’s limp body falling just an arm’s length away from his as the pavement underneath them bloomed red. His mind rejected the images almost as fast as they appeared. He didn’t want to believe it. A voice inside his head that sounded too much like Dad accused him of failing to keep Sammy safe yet again, failing to get the job done. But right then, seeing his brother struggling to keep it together was the thing that ultimately pulled Dean out of his shock. He couldn’t afford to wallow. Sam needed him.  
  
He put his hand on Sam’s shoulder, giving it a comforting squeeze to steady them both. “Hey, it’s okay Sammy. It’s all over now.”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah I guess so.” Sam jerked his head in a quick nod, his expression still tense. “So this is really it this time. This is Heaven.”  
  
“Yeah.” Dean let his hand drop from Sam’s shoulder, pulling away.  He was trying to wrap his mind around that but it didn’t really make sense to him.  Sam belonged in Heaven, that he knew for sure.  Living the life they did, no one came out clean.  Lies had to be told, innocence dashed, and hard sacrifices made.  But Sam was different.  He was good.  Deep down in his soul good.  He’d saved the world from Lucifer, hadn’t he?  It was only fair that he’d been granted a VIP pass through the pearly gates.  Dean on the other hand… Under the thick veneer of his bullshit hero persona he knew that he had a hell of a lot to answer for.  By all rights, he belonged back in Purgatory with the other monsters.  
  
“You’re wrong, Dean.”  
  
Sam and Dean nearly jumped right through the roof when Castiel’s deep monotone voice spoke up from the backseat of the Impala. They both whirled around, hands reaching for weapons that they immediately found were no longer there. Apparently Heaven had a zero tolerance policy for concealed firearms.  
  
“Goddamnit, Cas!” Dean yelled in annoyance. “We’ve talked about this. You know it creeps me out when you do that.”  
  
“My apologies.” Cas blinked out of the backseat and appeared on the road in front of them. The Impala’s headlights cast his silhouette onto the tarmac, elongated and enormous with the vague outline of wings where none were visible to the naked eye. “Is this better?” he called out to them.  
  
Sam and Dean shot each other a glance, then climbed out of the car to go investigate. Right then, a friend with insider information was exactly what they needed to help get them some answers.  
  
“Cas,” Sam said, obviously relieved to see a familiar face. “Good to see you, man.”  
  
“It’s good to see you too Sam, although I wish it was under different circumstances.” Cas looked much the same as the last time they saw him; same ill-fitting trenchcoat, same contemplative expression. “I suppose I should begin by saying welcome. Welcome to Heaven.” A soft smile formed on his lips. “I’ve been granted the honor of being your guide here.” His gaze shifted to Dean, blue eyes boring right through him. “Both of you,” he repeated in emphasis. “For everything that you’ve done and everything that you’ve sacrificed, you have both earned your place in paradise.”  
  
Irritation and a twinge of embarrassment prickled hot over Dean’s skin. He hadn’t given Cas permission to listen in on his thoughts and he sure as hell didn’t appreciate it. “You know that for sure?” he shot back. “Are we really in or do we still have to pass the credit check? Cause no offense, we’ve gone road-tripping down this stretch of highway once before and it was a whole lot of suck to go through just to get spit back out on Earth.  I’m not moving until I know exactly where this is all heading.”  
  
“Dean, those memories were handpicked by Zachariah to manipulate your emotions. This isn’t a test. This is the real thing,” Cas replied in earnest. “There’s no going back. Not this time. Death was quite adamant about that. You’re here to stay.”  
  
“Death?” Sam sputtered. “You spoke to Death?”  
  
“Yes. I asked him for this assignment specifically,” Cas said with a small wistful smile. “I wanted to be the one to help you through this transition. He wanted to do it himself, but given my rather unique history with the two of you he decided to grant my request. He says, 'hi,' by the way.”  
  
A fresh wave of reality hit Dean like a tsunami blow.  He felt like he was tail-spinning, spiraling without anything solid to grab onto.  His life really was over.  Sam’s life was over.  Everything they’d done; the hardships, the lives saved, the minor victories, and the major losses.  All of it over.  On one level he was relieved, the planet-sized burden of responsibility on his shoulders finally lifted.  But in its absence a bittersweet pang seeped into his chest.  What was he supposed to do now?  Who was he if he wasn’t a hunter?  He really didn’t know.  
  
“Okay. Okay, so what do we do? What happens now?” Sam asked.  
  
Dean could practically hear the gears turning in his brother’s head. Everyone thought Sam was the more reserved one. That was only because he took his time to actually think things through. Dean was usually the first one to jump right into the middle of a fight, but Sam was the one who was better at being able to actually hit the ground running.  It was just one of the reasons why they’d always made such a great team.  
  
“Do?” Cas asked him. “There’s nothing for you to do, Sam. This is Heaven. You are allowed to just be at peace.”  
  
“Okay but what about our friends who’ve died? Our parents? Do we get to see them now? And how come I still look like me? This is all supposed to be on the spiritual plane isn’t it? So my body can’t really be here. It’s down on Earth, right? If that’s the case, then how come I can still feel things?”  
  
Cas just stood there blinking at him, looking overwhelmed by the sudden interrogation.  
  
“Easy, bro,” Dean said, holding up a hand to slow Sam down. He knew more than anyone what his brother could be like when he had a puzzle to solve. Like a dog with a bone. “Give him a minute to answer one question before you throw him five more. Go ahead, Cas.”  
  
The angel shifted on his feet, visibly relaxing a bit. “Well to begin with, yes, what you’re seeing right now are not your corporeal bodies. Your hearts aren’t beating and your lungs aren’t really filling with air. Not unless you actively make the decision to draw a breath. They are…figments of your consciousness, let’s say. The sensations you feel; hot, cold, pain, pleasure – they’re closer to what you’d call psychosomatic reactions. You don’t need to worry about sleep anymore, or hunger, or thirst. You’ll feel the urges for them but you’ll never be ruled by them in the same way again. It takes a while for humans to fully adjust to the fact that they don’t need their bodies anymore. A century or so at least. Many choose never to let the illusion of them go. Sentimental reasons I suspect.”  
  
“Okay, okay, I’ll buy that,” Dean said, trying his best to process it all. “What about our parents? Our mom is here, right? What about our dad?” He knew that his father had escaped Hell after the Devil’s Gate and Dean had always hoped that he’d ended up in Heaven but he needed to hear it for himself.  
  
“Yes, they’re both here,” Cas confirmed. “They’re safe and they’re together.”  
  
“Together? Last time we were here you told us that everyone gets their own heaven,” Sam said.  
  
“Yeah, but remember what Ash said,” Dean pointed out. “He claimed there are some people who get to share; special cases, soulmates.”  
  
“Is that what happened, Cas? Are you saying our parents are soulmates?” Sam shot Dean a skeptical glance. “I mean, their marriage wasn’t exactly perfect.”  
  
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Dean shot back defensively.  He had a feeling about where his brother was going with this and he didn’t like it one bit.  It was a sore point between them and always had been.  Sam and John had been oil and water as soon as Sam had gotten old enough to answer back.  He accused Dean of turning a blind eye to all the things that their father had done wrong.  But Dean could say the same of Sam when it came to the things that Dad had gotten right.  
  
“Dean, you know as well as I do that Mom and Dad were separated for a while before I was born. You were there,” Sam reminded him. “You saw how they fought. That cupid we met even admitted that the angels had to arrange Mom and Dad getting together just so they would have us. The vessels.” Sam frowned, shrugging his shoulders slightly in a gesture of apology. “I’m not saying that they didn’t love each other. I know they did. I’m just saying that, taking everything into consideration, I’m a little surprised to hear that they’re one another’s soulmates.”  
  
Dean didn’t know how to respond to that.  What his brother said made some sense to him but it wasn’t in him to admit that out loud.  The importance of family was the bedrock he’d built his whole life on.  He didn’t like having to contemplate the cracks that might be hiding under its surface.  
  
“Humans,” Cas said flatly, rolling his eyes. “I don’t know where you come up with these ridiculous misconceptions.  It’s not about achieving a perfect union, even if such a thing existed.  Soulmates are two people who each share one half of the same soul.  No matter what comes between them they will always find one another.  Always be drawn back to one another, like magnets.  It’s a simple fact of their nature.  Emotion has nothing to do with it.”  
  
“Emotion has nothing to do with it?” Sam said in disbelief. “How can you say that?”  
  
“It’s the truth,” Cas replied simply. “Most of the time this…closeness manifests itself in romantic love because humans often choose to express their affection through their genitals.  I confess now, that I’ve experienced it firsthand I understand the impulse,” he admitted with a private smile. “But that’s not always the case,” he continued. “Sometimes it’s familial love, sometimes it’s a deeply symbiotic friendship.  Regardless, all of these bonds are subject to any variety of issues.  Some soulmate relationships are actually extremely contentious.  That doesn’t change the fact that they are fated to be involved in one another’s lives in one form or another.”  
  
“I get it,” Dean said. “Like Sid and Nancy, or Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.”  
  
Cas squinted at him in confusion. “I’ve never met any of those people so I can’t verify that for certain.  But I have seen your parents and the heaven that they’ve chosen to share together.” He turned his gaze to Sam. “I can say with complete confidence that they are soulmates who also love each other very much.”  
  
Dean grinned, elated to hear it. He gave his brother a soft punch to the arm in triumph. “See! I knew it.”  
  
Sam elbowed him back. “I didn’t say it wasn’t possible, jerk.  Just that I’m surprised.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m really happy for them.”  A thoughtful smile appeared on his face. “It’s nice to know that they’ve got each other now after everything that they both went through.”  He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets, more at ease now.  “So what’s it like?  Their heaven?”  
  
“Like a lot of people do, they chose a happy memory from their past and centered it around that,” Cas informed them.  “Actually it was the day that you two first met.  The day they brought you home from the hospital, Sam.  Those _versions_ of you both, shall we say, will be with them always.”  
  
Sam and Dean looked at one another.  They’d both had so little time with their mother before she died, but Sam was too young, had almost no memory of her.  Dean could see it in his brother’s eyes how much the news meant to him.  
  
“That was a pretty big moment for all of us, I guess,” he said, doing his best to keep the emotion in his voice at bay.  Then something occurred to him.  Something that needed clearing up right away.  “So what about me and Sam?” he asked, looking to Cas. “Ash was able to move back and forth to visit other peoples’ heavens.  Can you tell us how to do that too?  You know, in case I wanted to drop by and check in on this guy from time to time,” he added as casually as he could, jerking his thumb towards Sam.  “Make sure he’s not wasting away his eternity in a library somewhere.”  
  
“Oh bite me, dude,” Sam tossed back. “At least my version of heaven isn’t going to look like some skeezy strip club.”  
  
Cas looked at them like they’d started speaking in tongues. “I don’t understand.  You don’t need to visit him, Dean.  You’ll be seeing each other every day.  And Sam, whatever his heaven is will be yours too.  That’s how it works.  Unless you’re both choosing not to stay together?  Is that what you’d prefer?”  
  
“We can share?  But isn’t that just for-“ Dean stopped, realization dawning.  Ash had hinted at it before but he hadn’t given it much weight at the time.  Now he was realizing he’d been wrong not to.  “Wait.  You mean to say that Sam and I are soulmates?”  
  
“Of course,” Cas replied. “Isn’t it obvious?”  
  
“Dean.” Sam turned, his eyes wide and a grin of pure joy spreading across his face.  Dean couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his brother look so happy. “You hear that? We can stay together.”  
  
Dean should have been just as happy about it as Sam was, but instead his gut was twisted up in panic.  He wanted to stay with his brother more than anything but at the same time he was terrified that it would all go wrong.  The stakes were so high and their luck had always been so rotten. He remembered exactly what it had been like on their first visit to Heaven.  All those so-called happiest memories come to life and exposed for each other to see.  It had hurt more than he could say to see how many of Sam’s happy memories were of the times when they were apart.  Even if Zachariah had cherry-picked them just to piss him off, the asshole clearly had plenty of ammunition to choose from.  He didn’t know if he could stand to see much more if it was all going to be like that.  What’s worse, he was worried about how Sam might react to a trip down memory lane.  Their past was like a minefield; pockmarked by pain.  A good share of which they’d each brought down on the other.  Rehashing it might upset the fragile balance that they’d work so hard to get back to.  What if Sam saw something he shouldn’t?  Dean hadn’t been entirely honest about certain things.  He’d been taught to lie so well and so often that he wasn’t sure anymore where some of the old ones might begin to unravel.  Most of all, he was afraid that Sam would find out something he couldn’t forgive.  Would Sam ever be able to look at him the same way again?  
  
“You said we could choose,” Dean said carefully, turning to Cas. “So it’s our choice where we end up?”  
  
“Of course. You can choose to share a heaven but it’s not mandatory.”  
  
“Dean?” Sam looked at him in wide-eyed alarm.  The years seem to fall away and in that moment he was reduced to the vulnerable little boy that once hung on Dean’s every word. “This is okay, right? Cause if it’s not…if that’s not what you want-”  
  
“No,” Dean said quickly, cutting him off.  The last thing he wanted was for his brother to think that he was looking for an escape clause.  He’d only asked because he was worried that Sam might want one.  “Dude, no.  It’s always been you and me against the world right?  No reason to go breaking up the band now.”  
  
“You can’t joke about something like this,” Sam said, worry creasing his brow. “If you’d rather be with Lisa or someone else I’m sure we can figure something out.”  
  
“Just shut-up would you?” Dean ignored the flash of hurt on his brother’s face.  He was afraid that if Sam kept pestering him about it he’d end up saying something that he shouldn’t. “So what do we have to do to, Cas?”  
  
Cas glanced from one of them to the other. “Well, I have to agree with Sam.  This isn’t a decision to be made lightly.  You are soulmates but you also have free will.  If you decide later that you’d rather go your own separate ways it is possible to undo but I don’t recommend it.  Honestly, it’s very painful for everyone involved.  That’s why before anything becomes final you’ll have a probationary period.  It will give you each time to see whether or not you can find somewhere with compatible memories that you can both be happy in.”  
  
“How long is the probation for?” Sam asked.  
  
“Time is relative here,” Cas said, contemplating to himself. “It’s a little harder to measure by human standards.” He dug into one of the pockets of his coat and pulled out an antique silver pocket watch. “Here,” he said, handing it to Sam. “When this stops, I’ll be back to hear your answer.”  
  
“What happens if time’s up and we still can’t find a heaven that we both can live with?” Dean asked.  He didn’t know if he could stand living for eternity in a memory where Sam was shacked up with Jess at Stanford.  He wanted his brother to be happy but he was pretty sure that a millennium or so of that would drive him right out of his skull.  
  
“You will, Dean,” Cas assured him. “You’re soulmates after all. Trust in that.  I’m sure it will be much easier than you think.”  
  
Then, with a soft flutter of wings, Cas was gone. They were left standing alone in front of their car, the long dark highway stretching for untold miles ahead of them.  
  
Dean turned to his brother. “You ready for this?”  
  
Sam shrugged. “Are you?”  
  
Dean didn’t know, so he did what he always did when faced with a problem he couldn’t shoot his way out of.  He kept his thoughts to himself, got in his car, and started up the engine.  Sam climbed in next to him without another word, seemingly content to let the moment pass.  If there was one thing that they were both good at it was avoidance through forward momentum.  There would be plenty of things they’d have to talk over before this little journey was through.  Dean had a feeling that neither one of them wanted to be the first to have their personal highlight reel dragged out for inspection but they didn’t really have a choice.  Not if they wanted to stick together anyway.  He didn’t know exactly where Sam’s head was at but he was willing to go through just about anything to make things work - no matter what it cost him.  He’d gotten into the habit of swallowing his feelings his whole life and somehow, despite everything, he and Sam had made it through.  He told himself that he could deal with anything if it meant his brother would have a heaven he’d be happy in.  After all, they’d both already survived Hell.  Heaven should be a piece of cake, right?


	2. Chapter 2

 

As their car, (or the _illusion_ of their car as Cas would say), sped down the road to their first destination, Dean started to get more and more anxious about the kinds of things they were about to see.  He’d done a lot of crap he wasn’t proud of over the years, some in the line of work and some in the selfish pursuit of reckless abandon.  Sam already knew about more of them than he’d like.  The fights and the accusatory looks he’d received as a result had made Dean gun-shy of sharing any more, especially considering that they were just getting back on track with each other after the events of the last year.  Gadreel’s betrayal, killing Metaron, and re-opening Heaven; it had been a lot, even for them.  Sam had had to physically tie Dean down in order to allow Cain to take his mark back and put an end to the darkness that had taken root inside of him, the burning clawing bloodlust that had warped Dean’s mind and driven him to unspeakable things.  Everything he’d said, everything he’d done, the guilt of them still weighed heavy on Dean’s mind and he knew that Sam hadn’t forgotten them either.  The prospect of adding even more fuel to the fire by rehashing old memories made him nervous.  He decided to feel Sam out a little to get a read on where his brother’s head was at.  
  
“So,” he said, glancing at Sam out of the corner of his eye. “Sam Winchester’s greatest hits.  Care to share a couple of previews of the coming attractions?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Sam shook his head slowly from side to side. “Honestly, I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that we’re dead.  What’s going to happen to that trucker and his family now?”  
  
Dean huffed out a laugh.  He couldn’t help himself.  Only his giant bleeding-heart brother would be sitting around in the afterlife worrying about a bunch of civilians he’d only known for a few hours.  He reached over and patted the top of Sam’s shoulder. “They’ll be okay, bro,” he said, even though deep down he wasn’t so optimistic about their chances. “Some other hunters will pick up where we left off. Maybe they’ll have better luck.”  
  
“Yeah, I hope so,” Sam replied, sounding equally unconvinced.  
  
Undaunted, Dean was determined to get his mind off of it. “Come on, man! Get in the game here. You’ve got to have some idea of what your happiest Hallmark moments could be.”  
  
“Not really,” Sam sighed. “Pretty much every happy memory I have might start out okay but they all end either bad or bloody. That’s just kinda how my life has been.”  
  
Dean tried his best not to take that too personally.  Maybe he hadn’t been able to give Sam the life he should have had, but he’d done the best he could under the circumstances.  Things might have gotten fucked up but in his heart Dean had only had good intentions.  At least he hoped that’s how Sam would see it. “It wasn’t all bad was it?  We had some good times in there.  You know, between all the hellish nightmares and the risking life and limb for no pay.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sam conceded with a smirk. “I guess there could’ve been one or two.”  
  
They turned the next corner of the road, and as if it had been conjured right out of thin air, a huge brick building came into view on their left-hand side.  Ivy wound its way up the clay stone edifice all the way to the windows of the third story and each doorway was framed by stately Corinthian-style columns.  It almost looked imposing, if not for the double set of bicycle racks out front and the mismatched curtains in the upper windows.  It was clearly well lived in but it didn’t look like a family home.  At least none like Dean had ever seen.  The building looked a little familiar but he couldn’t place it exactly.  Sam, on the other hand, recognized it immediately.  
  
“Dean, look!” he exclaimed, rolling down the car window. “That’s Roble Hall.  It was my freshman dorm at Stanford.”  
  
Dean pulled the car over and squinted up at it.  _Awesome_.  Sam’s first pick right out of the gate was the exact place he’d been dreading. “Stanford, huh?”  
  
“Come on,” Sam said, practically jumping out of the car in his excitement. “I wanna see inside.”  
  
Dean sighed and shut the engine off.  Sam might have had plenty of happy memories there but to him Stanford was the thing that had lured his little brother away and kept them apart for three and a half long miserable years.  He didn’t want to spend even an hour in the place, never mind eternity.  Still, not wanting to dampen his Sam’s spirits, Dean pushed his own reservations aside and followed him in.  
  
Sam made a beeline straight for the second floor.  He led them down long hallways decorated on either side by colorful fliers advertising various club meetings and campus parties that were long over.  They passed door after door but Sam didn’t bother to check the names scrawled on their little whiteboards.  He seemed to know exactly where he was going.  Finally, they came to a door at the end of the hall.  It might have been a dorm room but from its looks it could just as easily have been a utility closet.  Unlike the other rooms, its door hadn’t been personalized in any way to reflect the style of its inhabitant.  Not even a Post-It note tacked to the outside.  
  
“This is it,” Sam said, pushing it open.  
  
Inside, the single room wasn’t much more than a bed and a desk.  There were books stacked up everywhere, a pile of dirty laundry, and a few handwritten study notes pinned up above the desk but those were the only real signs of life.  No posters on the wall, no pictures of friends or family.  By the looks of the place Sam might have bunked here for his first year away at school but in that time he sure hadn’t done much _living_ in it.  It was kind of depressing actually.  
  
Sam took a seat at his old desk, running the flat of his palm over the wooden surface. “This is so weird. It looks exactly the same.”  
  
Dean lingered in the doorway, looking around at the bare walls. “Dude, I’ve seen monasteries that were more fun than this.  I’m guessing you spent most of your time in Jess’s room.  Maybe we should be heading over there.”  
  
“What?” Sam looked up from the desk at him in confusion. “Um, no. I didn’t meet Jess until we were sophomores.  I was already living in another building by then.” He looked around, scanning the titles of the textbooks scattered about the room. “This was definitely freshman year.  I’m thinking sometime during my first semester.”  
  
Oh.  Well that made things even more confusing.  On the one hand, Dean was relieved that he wouldn’t have to the play third wheel on the Sam and Jess show for the rest of forever, but on the other hand that left him with more questions.  
  
“Well if it’s not for Jess then what are we doing here, man?” He gestured around the room skeptically. “What other happy memories could you possibly have about this joint?”  
  
Sam shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.  None of this makes sense.  Those first few months sucked.” He dragged a hand through his hair, blowing out a frustrated breath. “I was alone all the time.  I thought I’d be happy with that after all those years living with you and Dad in one shitty motel room after another but, man, was I wrong.  It was just lonely as hell.  I was miserable.  I didn’t have any friends.  I didn’t have…” Sam trailed off, looking thoughtful. “That can’t be it.”  
  
“What can’t be it?”  
  
Suddenly out of nowhere a phone rang.  They both searched their pockets for their cell phones but it wasn’t either one of theirs.  Heaven was apparently too far out of their service area.  Then on the next ring a figure began to materialize on the bed.  Sam jumped out of his chair in surprise and backed away from it.  Dean rushed to his side, instantly on full alert.  They might be in Heaven but protecting his brother was one part of him that’d never die.  As its features sharpened into focus, Sam grabbed Dean’s arm. “Dude, it’s me!”  
  
An eighteen year old Sam lay on the bed in front of them, the book he was reading propped upright on his stomach.  He didn’t seem to even know they were there.  His hair was shorter and his body didn’t have quite as much bulk to it as it would in just a few years, still clinging to some of that teenage gangliness.  His face was what shocked Dean the most however.  He hadn’t noticed when it had happened exactly but somewhere in the years between this Sam and the Sam that he knew, his brother had lost something – something important.  This Sam was still an innocent in so many ways.  The youthful softness around his mouth that had made his smiles come so easy once and the bright spark of unfettered potential in his eyes was still alive and bright in this younger Sam.  He had hope for a future that could never be his.  
  
The phone rang again.  The younger Sam set his book down and dug into the pocket of his jeans.  He pulled out a cell phone and flipped it open.  As soon as he read the name on the tiny display screen he bolted up on the bed, his textbook hitting the floor with a thud.  A look of overwhelming relief appeared on his face. “ _Dean?_ ”  
  
In that moment it all finally clicked in Dean’s head.  He knew what this was now.  He remembered being on the other end of that call and he knew its significance.  It was the first time he’d talked to his brother since Sam had chosen normal and left him behind.  He’d just assumed that since he’d never brought it up again that Sam had forgotten all about it.  
  
“ _Are you okay?_ ” the other Sam said into the phone worriedly. “ _You’re not hurt are you?_ ” He fell silent, listening intently to the other Dean’s response.  
  
Dean turned to his brother, not needing to hear the other half of the conversation to know that it would be slurred by whiskey. “I can’t watch this. It’s just too pathetic,” he said. “Why would you want to hang on to the memory of me drunk dialing you?”  
  
Sam shoved his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunching in on themselves. “Maybe it was just a drunk dial to you but it was kind of a big deal to me.”  
  
Dean heard the hurt in Sam’s voice and it made him feel like a heel. “I didn’t mean it like that,” he muttered.  
  
Sam sighed, his eyes on his eighteen year old self who was clutching the phone like a lifeline. “This was the first time that I’d heard from you since I left for school,” he said, as the scene continued to play out in front of him.  “Up until then I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to hear from you again.  You were so…quiet.  I was prepared for you to be mad.  I was waiting for you to yell like Dad did.  That I knew how to handle.  But you didn’t.  It was like you just shutdown.  It scared the shit out of me.  It felt like I’d lost my best friend.”  He shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “That phone call was the first time I knew for sure that we were going to be okay.  It was the happiest I’d been in months.”  
  
Dean remembered how he’d felt then as sharply as if it had just happened yesterday.  He had been twenty-two years old and for the second time in his life he felt like his family was being ripped apart.  He hadn’t wanted to tell Sam to stay because he knew that his brother was meant for better things, but him leaving had been a dagger to Dean’s heart.  Too raw and too painful a wound for him to breath around, never mind speak.  He hadn’t realized then how his silence had actually made a bad situation worse.  
  
It was too late for apologies.  He couldn’t go back in time and change how he’d reacted then, but he could offer reassurance now for whatever it was worth.  “Come on, Sammy,” he said, nudging Sam’s elbow. “Like I was ever going to let you off the hook that easily.”  
  
The corner of Sam’s mouth curved up in a small smile.  Dean counted it as a win.  
  
The other Sam sniffled, changing his cell from one hand to the other so that he could wipe the tears from his eyes. _“Really? You mean it?_ ” he asked into the phone.  A wide grin of relief broke across his young face as he heard the answer, dimples flashing. “ _Yeah. Yeah, I miss you too, D_.”  
  
Sam watched his teenage self light up with happiness, a fond smile on his face.  
  
Dean looked away, uncomfortable watching such a heartfelt moment.  He could stare down a wendigo without batting an eyelash but when it came to honest displays of emotion he was at a complete loss.  It was like he suddenly didn’t know what to do with his arms.  
  
“Okay, well this has been great but can we leave already?  I feel like I’m in the middle of a Lifetime movie.”  
  
“Yeah, sure,” Sam replied.  A tiny furrow lined his brow. “I just don’t understand one thing.  I thought we were supposed to be going places that had memories for both of us.  If that’s the case, why would the road lead us here?  My freshman dorm.  You didn’t come to Stanford until my senior year when Dad went missing.”  
  
“Strictly speaking, that’s not true,” Dean muttered under his breath.  He hadn’t exactly told Sam where he’d been that night and he was a little ashamed to admit it now.  
  
“What?”  
  
Dean rolled his eyes. “You aren’t the only one who remembers being here.”  
  
Sam looked at him like he’d grown a second head. “What do you mean?”  
  
“I was here, okay!  Well, out there actually.” Dean said, pointing towards the window.  “Right about now there’s going to be another one of me parked just outside with a half-empty fifth of Jameson sitting on the dashboard.”  
  
“Why didn’t you say something?!” Sam demanded.  “Why the hell didn’t you just come in and see me?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“That’s bullshit.  Don’t give me that,” Sam said with a scowl. “Don’t lie and tell me you don’t know why you decided to drive all the way to Stanford, find my dorm, and then get drunk in the parking lot _by yourself_.”  
  
“I don’t know! I was nervous I guess.”  
  
“You?” Sam scoffed. “Nervous?”  
  
“Yeah, I was nervous.  I was afraid that you wouldn’t want to see me, you know,” Dean admitted.  “Stanford was where you belonged and I…didn’t.  I didn’t want to just walk in there and get in the middle of you and your new college friends and your new college life.  I just wanted to make sure that you were okay.  So I took a few belts of liquid courage to psych myself up.  Then a few became a few too many.  I was too embarrassed to go stumbling around your dorm like some drunk idiot.  That’s when I decided it would better just to call you.”  
  
Sam looked crushed by his words. “Dean, I wouldn’t have cared about any of that,” he said adamantly. “And of course I wanted to see you.  You have no idea.”  
  
Dean shook his head. “All I knew was that when you picked up the phone, you sounded so happy to hear from me.  It was almost like nothing had changed.  It was the best I’d felt since you left.  I didn’t want to ruin it,” he confessed. “That’s why when you asked, I told you I was standing outside some bar instead.  I ended up sleeping it off in the car.  The next morning I rolled out of here just after sunrise so you wouldn’t find out.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, self-conscious and ashamed. “Pretty stupid, huh?”  
  
Thankfully, Sam didn’t answer.  He didn’t press him on it further or say anything more about it at all.  He merely put his hand on Dean’s shoulder and gave it an affectionate squeeze.  In the silent language of Winchesters that was as good as a hug.  
  
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Sam said finally. “We’ve got better places to be.”

It wasn’t long after they’d gotten back on the road that they got a major clue as to where their next destination might be.  Snow.  
  
“What the hell?” Dean flipped on the Impala’s windshield wipers, sweeping away the downy soft flakes as soon as they landed.  “Snow?  It snows in Heaven?”  
  
“I guess so,” Sam replied, watching the light snowfall melt down the glass.  “Wherever we’re going it must have something to do with the winter time.”  
  
“Winter…” Dean thought about that for a minute.  What happy memory could either of them have that had anything to do with- “Oh no way.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Dean grinned, pleased at himself that he’d figured out the answer before Sam had for once. “Nothing.”  
  
“Dean, what is it?”  
  
Just then, lights blinked on about a hundred yards ahead of them to the right, flashing streams of color across the jet black night.  They were emanating from a long string of Christmas lights draped haphazardly over the windows and doorways of a single-story budget motel.  Over the motel’s skinny parking lot was a neon sign advertising jewelry for cash.  
  
Sam took in the sight, realization dawning on his face. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”  
  
Dean said nothing, just pulled into the parking space in front of room number 12.  The Thomas Kinkade Suite.  He’d never forgotten the look of disdain on Sam’s face when they’d stopped there nearly seven years ago.  It pretty much matched the one he was wearing at the moment.  
  
Sam shook his head stubbornly. “Dean, no. No way.”  
  
“Come on. Was it really that bad?” Dean looked over at him hopefully. “I thought it was great.”  
  
Sam didn’t speak but the mutinous look in his eyes made his opinion on the matter clear enough.  
  
Suddenly a light came on inside the room.  From their vantage point inside the car, Dean could see the image of his brother in the window pouring eggnog into plastic cups.  A carbon copy of himself in his dad’s old leather jacket appeared in front of the motel room door as if he’d been beamed there from the Enterprise, complete with a sixer of beer under his arm.  Dean watched himself open the door and step over the threshold, bathed in the glow of the most pathetic looking Christmas party for two ever created.  He recognized the look on his own face in that moment; bewilderment and awe.  
  
He got out of the car, turning the collar of his jacket up against the cold, and gingerly took a seat on the hood of the car so as not to scratch it.  From there he could see the whole room through the window, complete with its sagging Merry Christmas banner and the skinny pine branch in a bucket that Sam had decorated with gas station air fresheners.  It was their last Christmas together before he’d been dragged down to Hell.  
  
He’d wanted to celebrate the occasion, figuring at the time that it would be his last chance.  They didn’t often take the time for celebrating when Christmas rolled around every year, not in any significant way since they’d been little kids, and he wanted just one more Christmas with his brother.  Sam had flat out refused.  With the number of days leading up to Dean’s expiration date getting smaller and smaller, the thought of putting on a happy face and pretending that he was having a merry holiday was just too much for him.  In the end though, Sam had caved and surprised Dean with a makeshift Christmas anyway.  As bittersweet as the whole situation was, Dean had been incredibly touched by the effort his brother had put into it.  It was one of the nicest things that anyone had ever done for him.  It was one of the few happy memories that he had to hold on to during the dark endless days that would come after.  
  
Inside the room, the other Sam and Dean were busy unwrapping their gifts when the passenger door of the Impala opened with a slight creak and slammed shut again.  Dean waited, listening patiently to his brother’s footsteps through the light snow.  The car sagged comfortably when Sam took a seat next to him.  
  
They sat in companionable silence for a while, watching the memory of that last Christmas under the warm halo of colored lights.  Dean could almost smell the rum from the eggnog it was so strong.  
  
“I didn’t even have time to get you a good gift,” Sam grumbled, breaking the stillness at last.  
  
Dean smiled softly.  “Hey man, I got a lot of good miles out of that motor oil.  If you really think about it, that motor oil helped save lives.”  
  
Sam laughed, shaking his head in bemusement. “You’re so full of crap.”  
  
“You love it and you know it.”  
  
As if proving his point, the other Sam grinned, laughing at something that the other him must have said.  They were a couple of glasses of eggnog down by now and feeling no pain.  
  
“See,” Dean said, pointing at them.  “Look at you.  That’s you right there having fun.  Admit it, Sammy.  Even when everything’s going to hell, literally Hell, we find a way to keep going.  If that’s not something to feel good about then I don’t know what is.”  
  
“You’re right.”  
  
Dean nearly did a double take at that. “Come again?”  
  
Sam rolled his eyes. “You heard me.  You’re right.  For a while there I actually enjoyed myself.  I wasn’t thinking about…everything.”  
  
“Yeah, me too,” Dean said with a smile. “That’s all I wanted, man.  That’s what I was trying to tell you.  For a few hours I didn’t have to think about Hell or having to say goodbye to you.  I was just having a good time with my kid brother on Christmas.”  
  
Sam turned to look at him, his expression serious again.  “Yeah but it’s not just about one night for me.  You look at this and you see one Christmas.  I look at this and I can’t help but see the Christmas after that.  When I was going out of my mind trying to figure out how to spring you from Hell.  Every Christmas, every holiday, every birthday that I had to spend without you over the years because someone or something was keeping us apart.”  He sighed heavily. “We lost so much time.”  
  
“I know.”  There was nothing Dean could say to make it better.  Nothing he could say to make up for what they’d lost.  He’d felt those absences just as strongly as his brother did, the gaps in his life that should have had Sam in them.  It wasn’t fair, but not much about being a Winchester had been.  The best they could hope to do now was to look forward instead of back.  “Look, obviously this memory isn’t it but we’ll find it.  We just need to keep looking.  When we do, we’ll have all the time in the world to spend together.”  Dean checked himself, clearing his throat to cover how his voice tripped and cracked over that last word.  “You’ll get sick of me in no time, Sammy, I promise,” he added briskly.  He stood, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets.  “Come on, let’s get moving.  I’m freezing my ass off out here.”  
  
They piled back in the car, Dean cranking up the heat as he pulled out of the motel’s lot.  He turned back onto the road, wondering to himself if Heaven had gas stations for whenever their tank finally ran dry.  Did they take American cash or did the angels have some kind of barter system going?  Or maybe the Impala would just drive forever since none of this was really real anyway.  Man, heaven was a confusing place.  
  
“I won’t,” Sam said quietly, seemingly out of nowhere.  
  
“Huh?” Dean glanced over at him, confused. “You won’t what?”  
  
The last of the light from the motel slid over Sam’s face, highlighting the cut of his profile.  He appeared to be staring serenely out the window at nothing in particular.  Dean wasn’t sure for a moment whether he’d said anything at all until he opened his mouth and spoke again.  “Get sick of you,” Sam clarified, eyes still watching the darkness.  “Not gonna happen.”  
  
Dean felt the impact of that statement wash over him in a rush of warmth.  He didn’t have a ready comeback or sarcastic quip in response.  None that he could think of anyway.  Nor did he trust himself to find the right words to return the compliment.  In lieu of either, he pressed play on the Impala’s ancient cassette player, filling the void with music instead.  Axel Rose immediately started wailing the lyrics to _Sweet Child of Mine_ through its speakers.  Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw Sam’s mouth quirk up in a half-smile.  To him, it was more than enough.


	3. Chapter 3

 

Dean hadn’t recognized their next destination as anything much when they’d first spotted it, appearing out of the mist like a great grey obelisk of brick and mortar.  The Astoria Hotel.  Without even having to see the inside he knew what would greet them.  Threadbare carpets, a Gideon bible in the bedside table, and a wafer thin bar of soap in the shower.  Just like a hundred other outdated city hotels that they’d stayed in over the years. Nothing to suggest that it was particularly special or significant in any way.  
  
Sam on the other hand, seemed to know exactly why they were there but he wasn’t offering any hints. He’d clammed up as soon as he’d set eyes on the place, responding to Dean’s questions with noncommittal grunts and downcast eyes.  It wasn’t until he’d led them through the door of room 207, a room that Sam navigated them towards almost mechanically, that Dean understood why his brother was behaving so strangely.  This was one memory recall that he definitely could have done without.  
  
Inside, surrounded by musty tiger print furnishings and garish red lighting, Dean watched as two figures appeared on the bed.  They were partially clothed and making out hot and heavy, beautiful sleek bodies moving together an intimate rhythm.  It was Sam and Ruby.  
  
“What the fuck?!” Dean shouted, whirling away so he wouldn’t have to see it.  Rage burned white-hot behind his eyes, set his mind spinning, and his ears ringing like an emergency pressure gauge inside his head was ready to blow.  He thought he could deal with just about anything to make this shared heaven thing work but apparently he was wrong.  This was too much.  Self-defense had him heading for the door before he exploded right on the spot.  
  
Sam grabbed his arm, stopping him before he could make his getaway. “Dean, wait! Please!”  
  
“Sam, I swear to God if you don’t let me go right now I’m going to break your nose.”  His fists were clenched at his sides, fingers itching for a knife handle to wrap around or a trigger to pull.  He’d already killed the hell-bitch once but at the moment he was more than happy to give it a second go.  How the hell could Sam do this to him?  What the fuck was he thinking bringing him here to watch him hooking up with _her_.  The one who’d turned his brother into a junkie and tricked him into releasing Lucifer.  It was cruel.  
  
Sam released him, holding his hands up in a gesture of truce. “Just listen to me a second.  I know it looks bad – .”  
  
“Fucking-A right it looks bad,” Dean shot back, cutting him off. “It looks like you dragged me into one of your spank-bank memories of you and that demon slut.  And now, what?  You just expect me to just sit on the sidelines while you rehash your glory days with her.”  He shoved his finger in Sam’s face, practically shaking with anger.  “Well fuck that, buddy, and fuck you too!”  
  
“You think this is about me and her?  Dean, this has got nothing to do with her!”  Sam opened his mouth to say more but he was interrupted by three sharp raps on the hotel room door.  
  
Ruby sprang up from the bed in just her underwear and a camisole to answer it while the other Sam hurriedly started getting dressed.  When the door swung open, Dean saw Bobby Singer standing on the other side of it accompanied by a slightly younger version of himself.  That’s when he realized what memory he was really seeing.  It was the moment that he and Sam had finally been reunited after he’d been rescued from Hell.  
  
The other Sam, now fully clothed, joined Ruby at the door to see who it was.  He froze in shock as if he’d seen a ghost, then lunged forward in full attack mode.  Veins bulging, teeth bared in a snarl, he was a force of pure animalistic fury.  Bobby held him back as best he could, trying desperately to get him to calm down.  Dean saw the look in his eyes the instant that Sam finally realized it wasn’t some trick.  He recognized it just as clearly as when he’d seen it back then – the relief and the heartbreaking love.  He’d been waiting forty years in Hell for that moment with Sam; hadn’t felt really and truly whole again until he got it.  Obviously, Sam had felt much the same way about being apart from him.  
  
Dean had occasion to question that fact from time to time; after he learned about Ruby, and again after he learned about Amelia.  It was his greatest insecurity, the worry that Sam didn’t need him as much as Dean needed him, that Sam would get along just fine without him, and that maybe someday Sam would decide he’d prefer things that way.  Now, forced to relive this moment, he could see why Sam held on to the memory of it so tightly.  Even though Ruby’s presence in it and the sting of her eventual betrayal tainted it some, it was still one of the most powerful displays of unguarded feeling that they’d ever shared.  It made Dean see how wrong he’d been all those times.  Clearly, the bond he felt towards Sam ran just as strongly both ways.  
  
He turned to Sam, who was watching the scene play itself out as well, his expression unreadable. “Sammy…”  
  
Dean didn’t know what to say.  He felt awful for jumping to conclusions and blowing up over it now that he saw the real reason they were here.  “I thought–”  
  
“Yeah, I know what you thought.”  Sam shook his head ruefully.  “And that’s exactly why I wanted you to see it.”  He faced Dean, something perilously close to hurt in his eyes.  “I’ve been thinking about it since you brought up Jess back at Stanford.  You just seemed so surprised that the memory wasn’t about her.  Maybe you didn’t think I noticed but I did.  It didn’t take me long to figure out why either.  You really thought that even though we’re freaking soulmates that I’d choose her over you.  And now Ruby?  Really?”  He laughed, a dry joyless chuckle.  “I don’t know if it’s because you have that little faith in me or because you have that little faith in you.  Either way, that’s pretty damn sad.”  
  
“You’re right,” Dean admitted.  He stared down at his boots, ashamed of himself.  “I’m sorry.”  
  
“How many different ways do you need me to say it before you’ll believe me, Dean?” Sam sighed heavily.  He reached out and took hold of the lapel of Dean’s jacket, giving it a light tug.  “You told me once that there’s no one you’d put in front of me.”  He paused, waiting until Dean met his eyes. “What makes you think that’s not just as true for me when it comes to you?”  
  
Dean got that uncomfortable feeling again.  That nervous itch under his skin like Sam could see the vulnerable parts of himself that he tried so hard to keep under lock and key.  “I don’t know.  I…” He backed up, pulling just out of Sam’s reach.  “I’ll work on it, okay.”  
  
Something flickered in Sam’s expression for a moment.  Before Dean could get a read on it, it was gone.  He shoved his hand in his pockets, a tight smile on his face. “Okay.”  
  
Dean nodded, ruthlessly squashing the anxious flutter in the pit of his stomach. “Okay.”  
  
The memory in front of them began to flicker and fade at the edges.  The other Sam and the other Dean had already hugged it out and Ruby was making her way out in typical walk of shame fashion, still pretending that she was some innocent girl named Kristy.  When the door closed behind her, the boys sat down with Bobby to catch up.  Their tattered little family of three reunited at last.  A few moments later the images blinked out and the room was empty again.  
  
Dean pulled out his car keys. “Come on, let’s roll.  I’m not spending the rest of my afterlife in some crappy hotel room with a mystery stain on the wall above the bed.”  
  
Sam looked confused for a second, glancing at the spot Dean was gesturing at with disgust.  He blushed red in embarrassment.  “Oh. Yeah…”  
  
Dean held up a hand, cutting him off.  “Shutup. I don’t want to know.”  That was really not a mental image he needed.  Like ever.  
  
Sam smirked, his bashfulness turning smug.  “No, you really don’t.”  
  
Dean shuddered exaggeratedly, earning a laugh from Sam, a real one this time.  Together they headed out of the hotel and back to their car.  Once they were on road again, Dean felt a big chunk of the worry he’d been carrying around with him begin to dissipate.  Sam had chosen him when it counted and he seemed to genuinely be on board with the whole riding off into the sunset together plan.  Now all they had to do was to find a place to call their own.

The Impala rumbled down the smooth, seemingly endless blacktop for miles and miles.  There were no mile markers to tell them where they were or how much further they had to go.  No other cars, no hitchhikers; it was like they were the only two people left in the world.  As far as Dean was concerned that was just fine by him, but that last memory reminded him of at least one other person he’d been wondering about.  
  
“Hey, you think we’ll get to see Bobby again?” he asked Sam.  “He’s up here somewhere, right?  I bet you five bucks that if Ash could figure out how to get his heavenly bar crawl on, Bobby must’ve already built himself a whole subway system up here.”  
  
“I bet he could,” Sam allowed.  He cocked his head, a warm smile on his face.  “But my guess is he’s kicking back in his den with a nice scotch, listening to the sound of his wife puttering around the kitchen.  He certainly deserves it.”  
  
Dean smiled, picturing the homey image that Sam had painted.  “Yeah, that woman could sure bake a great pie,” he said, remembering the first time he and Sam had met her.  Too bad it was years after she’d died.  “You know, for a zombie.”  
  
Sam let out a derisive snort. “It all comes down to food with you, doesn’t it?”  
  
“And sex,” Dean offered helpfully. “Now when you combine the two–”  
  
“Nope,” Sam said, squeezing his eyes shut with a grimace.  “Nope, didn’t need to know that.  TMI, dude.”  
  
Dean laughed.  He loved the fact that he could still reduce Sam Winchester: Badass Hunter to a grossed-out little brother with a well-aimed over share.  “Come on, Sammy.  Don’t tell me you’ve never chowed down on a whipped cream bikini before.”  
  
Sam’s eyes popped open, glanced at Dean and then darted away nervously.  His cheeks were flushed pink and he squirmed uncomfortably in his seat.  “Shutup,” he muttered.  
  
Dean sensed Sam’s sudden defensive façade and like any good big brother would he was gearing up to tear it apart without a shred of mercy when a light appeared in the distance.  He leaned forward over the steering wheel, squinting at it. “You see that?”  
  
Sam looked at where he was pointing. “Yeah,” he said. “Looks like we got another stop to make.”  
  
“Looks like.” Curiosity had Dean hitting the accelerator.  As they sped forward, the light grew brighter and what it illuminated became better defined.  An archway with letters crafted in scrapmetal that read _Singer Auto Salvage._  
  
“Bobby’s place?” Sam wondered aloud.  “Is this one of yours?”  
  
“We were just talking about him.” Dean shrugged.  “Maybe my subconscious mind-beamed us to Sioux Falls.”  
  
“Mind-beamed?” Sam shot him a wry look. “Really?”  
  
“You got a better word for it, Webster?”  
  
Sam just rolled his eyes without comment.  
  
When they came to the archway, they pulled off the road and through the entrance to Bobby’s yard.  Broken-down cars, rusted-out lawnmowers, and cast-off appliances sat in heaps, waiting patiently as nature gradually crept in and embraced them.  The old house stood guard over it all just as it always had; every detail of it recreated down to the peeling paint and warped porch stairs.  It had been their safe place for so many years, as entwined with the memory of their surly surrogate father as the sight of his battered old ball cap or the dusty smell of ancient books.  Dean felt his spirits lift just seeing it again.  
  
“Wow,” he said, as they stepped out of the car.  “I didn’t realize how much I missed the old dump.”  
  
Sam stared up at the gently sagging eaves.  “If Bobby heard you calling it a dump he’d tan your hide.”  
  
Dean glanced around guilty.  “You don’t think he’s inside do you?”  
  
“Doubt it.  Not the real him anyway.”  Sam shut his car door, taking stock of the place.  “The house looks pretty much like it did the last time we saw it, don’t you think?  If we’d somehow made it into his heaven I gotta figure things would be newer, like he’d want to remember them.” He looked over at Dean.  “This is how we remember it because this is how we’ve always seen it.  I think it’s here right now for us, not him.”  
  
Dean considered that a moment, let the sense of it roll around in his head. “Alright, well I guess we should go see what it’s got to show us then.”  
  
Sam nodded and together they scaled the porch stairs, each step accompanied by a groan of complaint from its old wooden boards.  The door gave under a light push, further confirmation that Bobby didn’t really live there.  The paranoid old coot never left even a window unlocked, or unsalted for that matter.  Leaving the front door ajar would have simply been unthinkable to him.  
  
The inside of the house looked just as decrepit as the outside; aged, dusty, and in a state of organized disarray that only Bobby had ever been able to make sense of.  Books were piled everywhere, artifacts from a hundred different archaic religions were sandwiched together on the shelves, and the old threadbare couch looked like it was ready to give up the ghost just about any day now.  It was comforting in its way, more familiar to them than just about any place in the world.  Bobby’s home had been their safe haven on and off over the years in between hunts.  Whatever they needed; whether it be a solid meal, a wound stitched, or a kick in the ass – Bobby Singer had been there to provide it for them.  
  
Dean grabbed a seat on the arm of the couch, taking it all in.  “Look at this place.  It’s a relic filled with relics.”  
  
Sam leaned against the old roll-top desk, its surface covered in yellowed papers.  “It’s a shame he couldn’t salvage more of it after the fire.  I bet there’s some stuff in here that would’ve come in handy a time or two.”  
  
“Guess we’re not going to need any of it now.” Dean sighed, resigned.  He was going to miss hunting.  Despite all the pain and the sacrifice it had cost him over the years it was one of the few things that gave his days purpose.  What was left when that was gone?  
  
“Yeah. I guess not,” Sam replied thoughtfully.  
  
They didn’t have time to stew over that for long.  Seconds later the memory started to come together before their eyes.  A carbon copy of Dean sat across the large wooden desk from a carbon copy of Bobby, each of them with half-drained glasses of scotch in front of them.  Sam was nowhere to be seen.  
  
“ _Dean, he’s been through how much?_ ” Bobby said.  “ _Somehow he always bounces back_.”  
  
The other Dean sighed, swished the amber liquid in his glass.  “ _He’s never been through this_.”  
  
“I know what memory this is,” Dean said, sitting up straighter.  
  
Sam met his eyes, catching on not a second behind him.  “Yeah, I think I do too.  I wasn’t here for this part but I remember seeing you and Bobby sitting there just like that when-"  
  
“When you got your soul back,” Dean finished.  “You were out cold.  I was worried you might not pull out of it."  
  
“About now, there’s another one of me who just woke up in the panic room,” Sam said.  “Disoriented and confused as hell.  I should be walking through that door right–”  
  
Suddenly the other Sam appeared just as predicted, walking into the living room in something of a daze.  His gaze immediately honed in on Dean. “ _Dean_.”  
  
At the sound of his name the other Dean stood and turned to him, his drink forgotten. “ _Sam?_ ”  
  
The newly re-souled Sam rushed forward and hugged him tightly, overwhelmed and instinctively clinging to his big brother for consolation.  Dean gripped him back, the worry that lined his brow disappearing now that he had his Sammy back and finally whole.  
  
“I was so freaked out, man.  And so relieved to see you and Bobby again,” Sam confessed, watching the image of them hugging.  “Last thing I remembered at the time was falling into the pit with Adam.  Then I woke up here with no memory of anything in between.”  His face fell into a frown.  “I had no idea yet of what I’d actually been doing.”  
  
“That wasn’t you,” Dean insisted.  He hated to see Sam taking the blame for things his meat-suit had done without a soul to keep it in check.  “None of that was your fault.  You know that.”  
  
“I know but…” Sam sighed, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “It still doesn’t feel like that sometimes.  It was my body, wasn’t it?”  
  
“Yeah, but you weren’t in it.”  Dean crossed to him, ignoring the memory images for the moment.  After experiencing the effects of the Mark, Dean knew what it was like to feel out of control.  The guilt of it, never really knowing how much of it had been him and how much of it had been the power he couldn’t contain.  But this was different in a very important way.  Sam didn’t deserve the guilt he was laying on himself because he hadn’t _been_ himself.  All the parts of him that mattered had been held hostage at the time.  
  
He put a hand on Sam’s shoulder, forcing him to look him in the eye.  “Listen to me, I was there hunting right beside that guy for weeks.  I know you better than anyone and there’s no question in my mind he wasn’t you.  Not even a little bit.”  
  
“Sure, I know.  Cause he was better at it than me,” Sam said dryly.  
  
“No, he wasn’t,” Dean told him.  “He was calculating and he was ruthless.  Maybe that made him a good hunter but that also made him a really shitty partner.  He didn’t give a damn about watching my back or about any of the people he hurt.  You care about everybody.  That’s why it’s hard for you to do the things we have to do sometimes, but it’s also what makes you a good person.”  
  
Sam looked at him hopefully. “Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah.”  Dean let his hand fall from Sam’s shoulder.  “Why’d you think I fought so hard to get you your soul back, man?  I’d choose you as my partner over him any day of the week.”  
  
Sam smiled in gratitude. “Thanks, Dean.”  
  
Dean shifted on his feet, retreating a bit once he realized how he’d let himself get carried away.  He was programmed to come to Sam’s defense, even when it meant defending him from himself.  He looked over at the memory images which had started to fade.  Bobby had welcomed Sam back with a slightly awkward hug and was in the middle of offering him a beer when Sam proclaimed that he was starving.  He, Sam, and Dean headed towards the kitchen together to share a round of sandwiches.  They dissipated like mist as soon as they crossed onto the faded linoleum floor.  
  
“So what do you think?” Dean asked Sam once they had gone.  “We could hang here if you want.  Both of us have plenty of good memories here, right?”  
  
He just was fine with putting an end to their little road trip through Heaven and setting up shop at Bobby’s house.  So far their journey had been full of emotional ups and downs but it was nothing even close to the things his paranoid mind had dreamed up.  He was starting to think that maybe he’d been wrong to be worried about it before.  In fact, dredging up these old memories had seemed to actually draw him and Sam even closer together than when they’d began.  Maybe that was the whole point all along.  Dean would keep going with it if that’s what Sam wanted, but he felt compelled to at least suggest quitting while they were ahead.  He was too smart of a poker player not to.  
  
Sam straightened up and folded his arms across this chest, considering.  “I don’t know.  It’s hard for me to think about this as anything but Bobby’s place.  It was his home, you know?  I don’t know if us squatting here for the rest of time is really the right thing.”  
  
“You’re probably right,” Dean conceded.  He hadn’t thought about it that way but Sam had a good point.  This house was Bobby’s and even though the old man had made them feel welcome in it when he was alive it was still his home, not theirs.  
  
“Besides,” Sam added.  “I still get kinda jumpy being around the panic room.  I’ve spent way too much time down there, most of which I’d really rather forget.”  
  
“Understandable.”  Dean didn’t like to dwell on the long hellish days Sam had spent detoxing down there either.  The sound of his brother’s cries of agony had haunted him for weeks afterward.  
  
“We should keep moving,” Sam told him.  He paused for a moment, looking at Dean as if he had something more to say but wasn’t sure how.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing,” Sam said, hesitantly.  “Just…We’ve spent our whole lives on the run.  Hunting, hustling, scraping by as best we can.  It’s going to be a big adjustment not to have to worry about all that anymore.  But I think it’s going to be okay.  I really do.”  
  
Dean shoved his hands in his pockets and stared down at his boots, embarrassed that he’d let himself be so transparent.  He knew that Sam wasn’t just talking about himself.  He was trying to reassure him in his subtle way.  
  
Sam continued, more confidently now.  “All that pressure, all that life or death responsibility; it’s not our burden anymore.  We’ve got a second chance now to do whatever it is we want to do and nothing holding us back.  It’s a gift, Dean.  Like Cas said, we’ve earned it.  Don’t you think?”  
  
Dean nodded, letting his brother’s words sink in.  It was going to be a big change – change not being something he was especially great at.  But then again, he didn’t have much choice.  Death was pretty much the be-all and end-all of forced retirements.  “I suppose we could both use a break after all this time,” he said.  He looked up at Sam, a half-smile on his face.  “Rest in peace?”  
  
Sam huffed out a short laugh.  “Sounds good to me.”


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

Sam and Dean hadn’t been back on the road long before a round metal doorway appeared in the side of a low hill to their right. Dean slowed the car, pulling over to get a better look.

Sam perked up in his seat and pointed out the window. “Check it out.”

“The bunker!  Nice job, Sammy.  You brought us home.”  Dean had expected to end up there at some point if they kept going long enough, but he hadn’t expected his brother to be the one to choose it.  Sam hadn’t really taken to their makeshift home in the same way that he had.  He’d just assumed that it would be one of his own memories that would eventually lead them there.

He turned and looked at Dean. “Are you sure it’s me?  It could just as easily be you doing it.”

“Huh. I guess.”  Dean had been so sure that it was Sam’s memory that they’d be looking at next.  It was his turn after all, going by the pattern they’d been working under up until that point.  But then again, if they were going to agree on a place it stood to reason that it they’d each have a hand in guiding them there.  Like Cas had said, they were soulmates.  Anything was possible.

“Maybe it's both of us,” Dean suggested hopefully.

“Maybe.” Sam smiled. “Let’s go check it out.”

Dean drove the Impala up the slope of thick grass and parked it under a thin crop of trees on the leeward side of the hill.  They got out and walked around to the door of the bunker.  Surprisingly, they found it unlocked.

“Just like Bobby’s place.  I guess home security isn’t a real issue in Heaven.” Sam said with a shrug.

They stepped inside, following the passageway in to the bunker’s inner door which was left open as well.  Dean frowned.  Heaven or not, it still irked him to find his home unguarded.  His sense of protectiveness was so deeply ingrained in him that he couldn’t let it go so easily.  “If this works out we’re definitely still keeping it locked.  I don’t want to wake up and find some wayward angel has gotten into my whiskey.”

“Cas wouldn’t do that,” Sam said, stepping over the threshold and flicking on the main lights.

“I meant Gabriel,” Dean grumbled.  He followed Sam down the stairs into the bunker’s command center, thinking of all the havoc the Trickster could cause in his nice orderly kitchen.  “You know he’s gotta be flapping around up here somewhere.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Sam agreed. “Good point.”

They walked into the library and stood there a few moments waiting for an image to present itself, but nothing appeared.  As the minutes dragged on, they began looking around for some signs of what memory they might be there to see.  The room itself didn’t any different from how they’d left it on Earth.  The books were all in order.  The artifacts salvaged by the Men of Letters over the decades were aligned neatly on their respective shelves.  Even the newspaper Sam had been reading before they’d left for the hunt was still right there on the table where he’d set it down.

“So what happens now?” Dean asked.

“I don’t know.  All the other memories just kind of started as soon as we showed up.”  Sam frowned slightly, what Dean privately called his thoughtful face.  “When we were in Heaven last time, some of the memories were triggered by objects.  Remember when you found that little toy car?  You picked it up and it brought us to your old bedroom.”

Dean nodded excitedly, catching on to where Sam’s mind was going.  “Yeah, okay.  So maybe there’s something here that will kick start the memory.  We just need to figure out what it is.”

“Man, it could be anything,” Sam said, sounding a little exasperated.  “I mean this is our home.  Almost everything in here holds some kind of significance.”

“Nothing in particular standing out to you?”

“Nothing really.” Sam looked around, his eyes scanning critically over every surface.  Then he seemed to zero in on one of the bookshelves. “Wait. Maybe.”

Dean watched as Sam walked over to it and picked up a copy of The Wizard of Oz.

Suddenly a blur of sickly green skin and black smoke whooshed past them.  Hot on its trail came Charlie and Dorothy Baum, racing straight through the library to the war room with their guns raised.  Dean could hear the echo of his own voice and of Sam’s shouting from somewhere at the top of the stairs.

“What the hell?” Dean said, hardly believing what he’d just seen.

“Oh, I get it.” Sam turned to him, smiling sheepishly.  “Um, remember when we accidentally set loose the Wicked Witch of the West.”

“Yeah, Sam.  I think I vaguely recall something like that happening,” Dean replied sarcastically.  “And that was a happy memory for you, was it?”

“Not that part.” Sam rolled his eyes.  “Think about it, Dean,” he said, latching onto thought and working it out in his mind.  “You started nesting as soon as you walked in here.  It wasn’t like that for me.  I didn’t think of the bunker as a real home until something came along and threatened it from the inside.  I guess I was scared to let myself get attached to the idea of putting down roots.  Every time I tried to before something would happen and we’d take off again.  But this was the day that changed.  Something bad happened but with a little help we were able to set it right again and the bunker was still ours.  That was the first time in a long while that I went to bed at night feeling like you and I were in a good place.”

“I guess it makes sense,” Dean reasoned.  “We were even getting along there for a little while.  It was kinda perfect,” he added wistfully.  Then he remembered something else and his expression darkened. “Until Gadreel.”

He still hadn’t forgiven himself for letting the rogue angel inside his brother’s melon, or for his part in tricking Sam into agreeing to it.  Sam had been happy in this moment, blissfully unaware that he wasn’t alone inside his own head.  Dean had managed to sour even that for him, one of his nicest memories of safety and belonging.

“Dean, stop,” Sam ordered.  “I know what you’re thinking.  Don’t ruin it.  What Gadreel did later doesn’t make how I felt then any less valid.  It doesn’t to me so it shouldn’t to you.”

“Are you sure?” Dean asked skeptically.  “What he did…Hell, what _I_ did –”

“Yes,” Sam said firmly, cutting him off.  “And we’re not going down that road.  We’ve both done things we’re not proud of.  We’ve both kept secrets that we shouldn’t have and we’ve both said some pretty awful, hurtful shit.”  He shook his head, his eyes full of regret.  “This is like a fresh start for us now, Dean.  It’s time to let all of that crap go.  I’m not carrying it with me for the rest of forever and I really hope that you don’t either.”

Dean nodded, humbled by his brother’s honest forgiveness and the ease with which he gave it.  This whole time he’d been worried that they were going to dredge up shit he didn’t want dredged up.  That’s just how his mind worked; an endless cycle of guilt and fear that he hid under layers upon layers of bravado and denial.  Then Sam went and just absolved him of what was probably the worst of the worst.  He’d never been able to let things go or to rise above them as well as Sam could.  Since it seemed to mean so much to him to have this fresh start free of that old baggage, Dean promised himself that he was going to try.

“Okay.  You got it,” he agreed.  “I might need a little help every once in a while but I’ll give this new zen of yours a shot.”

“Good.” Sam smiled at him warmly.

“So you think this is the one?” Dean asked him hopefully.  “Its home.  I don’t think we can do much better than that.”

“Yeah, I think it is,” Sam said.  “I know I’m good with it.  But hey, there’s gotta be a happy memory for you here somewhere too, right?  Don’t you want to see what it is?”

Dean was more than ready to nail this heaven thing down but he couldn’t deny that he was curious.  They’d already traveled through the majority of their past, and compared to all those years on the road they really hadn’t been living in the bunker for long.  He didn’t think he’d done anything in that short amount of time that could get him in trouble with Sam.  Nothing that Sam didn’t already know about anyway.  It couldn’t hurt to see just one more.

“Yeah, sure,” Dean replied.  “Why not.”

Sam clapped a hand on the back of Dean’s shoulder.  “Alright, Peter Pan.  Let’s go find your happy thought.”

Dean snorted in amusement.  “Follow me, Tinkerbell,” he said with a smirk.  With that, he headed off in the direction of his bedroom, laughing freely when Sam gave his back a playful shove.

He wasn’t exactly sure whether or not his happy memory was going to be in his bedroom but he figured it was a good a place to look as any.  After all, he spent most of his time in there when he wasn’t researching in the library with Sam or throwing a meal together in the kitchen.  He didn’t think the library held anything for him or else he would have felt it.  He associated it too much with work.  And as much as he liked cooking for Sam he didn’t think the kitchen held any particularly awesome memories for him either.  His bedroom just had to be the place where the magic happened.

They walked in and Sam leaned against the doorway while Dean wandered around looking for something to spark his interest or call out to him in some way.

“You think it’s in here?” Sam asked.  “Any idea what it could be?”

“I don’t know.”  Dean shrugged.  “I mean, if I was my happy memory I’d be in here.  This is where all my stuff is.”

Sam arched an eyebrow at him. “Well that’s helpful.”

“Shut up, would ya?” Dean told him. “I’m trying to concentrate.”  He shoved his hands in his pockets, slightly worried now.  He thought about all the time they’d spent in the bunker.  He had to have a happy memory here somewhere.  If he didn’t, he and Sam would have to keep looking until they found another place that would work for both of them and Dean wasn’t sure where that could possibly be if not the place they called home.  Their parent’s old house in Lawrence?  They were too little then.  Sam wouldn’t even remember it.  One of the zillion or so fleabag hotel rooms they’d passed through?  Nope, not fucking likely.  Zero water pressure and the stink of mold lingering in the air.  Not exactly his idea of Heaven.

“I don’t understand,” Dean said, at a loss.  “It’s gotta be here.”  He sat down on the bed, wondering if maybe they should try the kitchen after all.

That’s when it happened.  All of a sudden he watched himself walk past Sam into the room and shut the door behind him.

Sam startled, backing up against the wall.  “Whoa, what the hell?  Dean, that’s you!  What did you touch?”

“Yeah,” Dean said in awe, watching himself take off his overshirt and then his t-shirt, tossing them both in his clothes hamper.  It looked like it could have been from any average night when he was getting ready to go to sleep.  “That’s me alright.”  Then he realized what he’d done to trigger it.  He could have kicked himself for not putting it together sooner.  “The bed, Sam!” he exclaimed, springing up and turning to his brother.  “Christ, it should have been obvious.  _Memory foam_!”

“You’ve got to be kidding.  Wow.  I knew you were attached to that mattress but…” Sam trailed off, his eyes going wide and his Adam’s apple bobbing in an audible gulp.  “Dean, what memory is this?”

“Um, I’m not sure.  Doesn’t look so special.” he said hesitantly.  He followed Sam’s line of sight over his shoulder, turning to see what had his brother looking so freaked out.

The other Dean had stripped down to his boxers by then and laid himself out on the bed.  Except his boxers weren’t where they should be.  They were down around his ankles.  The other him was jerking off.

“Oh,” Dean said.  “Awkward.”  He watched the other him stroking his cock, his eyes closed in pleasure, and his teeth worrying his bottom lip as precome started to bead up at his slit.  He had to admit, he looked pretty hot doing it.  He turned back to Sam who was staring at him in what he was assumed was a state of shock.  “Sorry,” Dean said, rubbing the back of his neck.  He was more than a little embarrassed of the other Dean on the bed and of himself for holding onto the memory of a damn jerk-off session for so long.  “I’m pretty sure this was our first night here.  First time in forever that I had my own room with a door I could close.  You know how that goes.”

“ _Sammy_ ,” the other Dean moaned, gripping the bedspread with his free hand as he jacked his cock faster.

Dean felt the bottom drop out of his stomach.  _Fuck!_   This was exactly the kind of shit he’d been afraid of.  How was Sam going to zen his mind around this one?

Sam’s eyes looked like they were ready to pop out of his head.  “What did he say?”

“I don’t-“

“ _Sammy,_ ” the other Dean moaned again.  “ _Careful.  I’m gonna come_.”

Dean blanched, horrified to have his deepest secret exposed.  “Sam, listen to me,” he began.  “This isn’t what it looks like.”  He was desperate to explain it all away somehow.  His mind spun, searching for some kind of rational excuse for why it wasn’t actually what it sounded like.  That one of his happier memories involved him jerking his dick to the mental image of his own brother sucking him off.  Pathetic didn’t even begin to cover it.  Sick.  Depraved.  Unforgivable.

“Really, Dean?” Sam said, his voice eerily calm as he dragged his eyes away from the image on the bed and stared Dean down.  “Cause what it looks like, is that you’re laying there fantasizing about coming down my fucking throat.  What does it look like to you?”

Just then the other Dean came with another loud moan, spurting come in thick white stripes over his stomach.  “ _Yeah, Sammy.  That’s it,_ ” he sighed in pleasure.  “ _Love you so much_.”  A moment later he faded away, leaving no evidence of himself ever having been there.

There was a moment of heavy silence where Dean could practically hear the condemnations he expected to be gearing themselves up in Sam’s mind, ready to come pouring out of his mouth any second.  He spoke up first, hoping to cut them off before he was irreparably crushed under the weight of them all.

“I’m sorry!  I didn’t mean for you to find out.  Especially not like this.  I swear I never would have done anything about it.  You’re my brother.  That’s always going to be the most important thing.”  Dean swallowed hard, fighting back tears.  “Look, I don’t want you to feel weird about this.  Or about me.  As far as I’m concerned we never have to talk about this again.”

Dean waited, hoping against hope that Sam wouldn’t say the things that he feared hearing the most.  That he couldn’t be around him, didn’t want to see him again; that he thought he was sick.  Dean prepared himself for the worst.

There was another moment of tense silence and then, like a time bomb reaching zero, Sam exploded.  He shoved Dean hard against the wall, his eyes flashing angrily, fists gripping Dean’s shirt collar.  “You selfish son of a bitch!  How could you keep this from me?  Do you have any idea what you put me through?”

“I’m sorry!”

“All these years!  All these years I’ve been beating myself up, fucking dying inside because I thought something was wrong with me.  I used to blame it on the demon blood.  But even after the trials were over, when I supposed to be purified, even then it didn’t stop.  I thought it was just me. That I was alone in this.  A freak.  And now I find out…” Sam eased his grip, letting his hands slid down to rest on Dean’s chest.  “You should have just told me this a long long time ago.”  Their eyes met; hazel blue to emerald green.  “I wouldn’t have been mad, Dean, I promise.”

“Sammy.”  Dean reached up to touch Sam’s face.  The angles of it, the stubble on his chin, the tiny scar at his hairline; every inch was as familiar to him as his own.  It was the same face that he’d once wiped clean of childish tears and later of blood.  Now they’d turned a corner, and he could let himself touch how he’d wanted to for so long; a lover’s caress.

His fingers drifted to Sam’s hair, dove into the soft brown locks, and held.  He’d been dreaming about this moment forever but he’d never imagined it would be so easy or feel so natural just to lean in and let their lips meet.  The kiss started slow.  Testing, tasting, exploring sensations, and syncing to one another’s most intimate rhythms.  The soft glide of their lips, the slip slide of their tongues, and the slightest drag of teeth on tender flesh.  Then Sam moaned; a broken sound deep in his throat, and suddenly the years of pent up desire refused to be ignored any longer.

Dean pushed Sam back a step, getting enough space between them so that he could yank his Henley off over his head and toss it to the floor.

For a split second, Sam just stood there and stared at him in mild shock.  Then all at once he seemed to snap back to his senses and got with the program, shedding his own flannel so fast that one of his buttons went flying.

Somehow they made it to the bed between heated kisses and roving hands; their clothes ending up strewn across the floor like breadcrumbs marking their path.  They tumbled together gracelessly onto the mattress, too eager to press flesh to naked flesh to care about trivial things like gravity.

Dean rolled over onto Sam, grabbing his wrists and pinning them to the bed above his head.  By the flash of heat in his brother’s eyes he could tell that Sam didn’t mind him taking charge of the proceedings.  He’d always been the one to teach his younger brother things like how to talk to girls and how to make the first move on a date.  In his mind it was only fitting that he lead the way in this too, taking care of his Sammy in a whole new way.

“Have you ever…?” he asked, breathlessly.  “You know.”  He needed to know but he wasn’t sure what he wanted the answer to be exactly.  Part of him was hoping for a little confirmation that this wasn’t just something Sam was into in theory, but another part of him definitely couldn’t stomach hearing about how many guys Sam might have practiced on before him.

Thankfully, Sam didn’t make him spell it out.  “Oh.  I um, I did some messing around in college.  Just blow jobs and stuff.  Nothing more.  Not with another guy anyway,” he added, his cheeks coloring slightly with embarrassment.

“Not with another guy.”

That peaked Dean’s interest.  "You mean you and Jess?”  His mind conjured up a few helpful images of what Sam was hinting at and every single one of them was hotter than the next.  He’d never got a chance to really know her but still he was pleasantly surprised to think that Sam’s adorable blonde-next-door girlfriend might have had such a kinky side to her.

Sam turned a deeper shade of pink.  “She…she was pretty open-minded about things.  Stuff she knew I liked.  She had this toy…. Fuck Dean, do you really want to talk about this right now?”  To illustrate his point he bucked his hips up, rubbing the hard length of his cock against Dean’s thigh.  “Come on,” he whined in frustration.

“Alright, needy,” Dean chuckled.  “Just trying to get a read on what you like.”  He kissed Sam slow and deep to soothe him.  “But if you think this conversation is over you’re dreaming.  Cause for me, you getting pegged by a hot chick is never going to get old.”

“Oh yeah, what about you?” Sam shot back, blushing furiously.  “Don’t tell me - The Great Dean Winchester would never take it up the ass, am I right?”

“I never said that.”

Sam’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Really?”

“Don’t look so shocked, Sammy.  You know me.  I’ll try anything once.  Now where were we?” He released one of Sam’s hands, dragging his fingertips down the underside of Sam’s arm, over his nipple, and down the taut muscles of his torso to the base of his cock.  “How about here?”

“Hell yeah.” Sam tossed his head back, eyes closing to mere slits.

Dean stroked his cock, trailing kisses down the column of Sam’s neck.  The salty tang of his brother’s skin, the warm scent of his hair, and the breathy little sounds he made were downright intoxicating.  It was a crying shame that they’d never been willing to go this far in life, never knowing what they’d been passing up.  But then again, Dean was pretty sure if he’d known how sinfully hot Sam looked like this, lost in pleasure and utterly debauched, they never would have stopped the Apocalypse.  The world could have collapsed to rubble outside their motel room and he wouldn’t have cared.  He would have just tied Sam to their bed and let the whole damn thing burn while he made his little brother scream his name in ten different dead languages.  Now they had nowhere to be, no responsibilities to weigh them down, and all the time in the world to spend making up for what they’d been missing.

Shifting gears, Dean sat up on his knees between the sprawl of Sam’s legs.  One hand still working his brother’s cock, he spit a couple times onto the fingers of his free hand, getting them nice and wet.  Then he reached down under Sam’s balls and rubbed them over his hole.

Sam groaned, his hips rising off the bed.  He drew his knees up, holding them to his chest and shamelessy offering up his ass to more of Dean’s touch.

“Fuck, Sammy,” Dean swore almost reverently.  He let go of Sam’s cock, running his hands over and around the firm muscles of Sam’s ass and thighs.  “So goddamn hot like this.”

He sucked kisses into the meat of Sam’s thighs, closed his teeth in light nips around the tight tendons, and dragged his tongue over the curve of one cheek in teasing swirls.  His own cock was rock hard and practically aching for some kind of action but he wanted to draw out this moment for as long as he could, savor it and etch it into his mind forever.

“Dean, please,” Sam moaned in desperation.

“Its okay, Sammy.  I got you.”

Taking pity on him, Dean put one hand on each side of his brother’s ass to spread him open, flattened his tongue, and licked a broad swipe over his pucker.

Sam gasped and shuddered, his fingertips pressing white circles into the backs of his knees.

Dean started lapping at the tight furl of muscle, feeling every little jerk of Sam’s body that it caused until gradually they lessened and Sam relaxed into it.  Then he pointed his tongue and set to work massaging him open.

Sam mewled as Dean slipped the wet tip of his tongue inside his hole, fucking him shallowly with it.  He closed his eyes, licking his lips and catching his bottom lip between the drag of his teeth, totally gone on the sensations that Dean was submitting him to.

Dean rimmed him good, plunging his tongue steadily deeper and pressing against his soft inner walls until they loosened for him.  He knew the bottle of lube in his nightstand was empty.  He’d meant to buy more but he hadn’t planned on dying before he got a chance to.  Unfortunately he didn’t know how to go about getting more in Heaven without having an extremely awkward conversation with Cas, so in the meantime he planned on making do as best they could without.  As soon as he felt like Sam was ready for it, Dean slid one of his fingers in alongside his tongue, pulling the rim of Sam’s hole open a little wider.

“Ah fuck,” Sam moaned.  “Dean.”

Spurred on by the sound of his name falling from Sam’s lips in that plaintive tone, Dean fucked him with this tongue and his finger, feeding more spit into his hole until Sam was sloppy with it.

Sam’s thighs were trembling, his cheeks flushed, and his mouth slack with pleasure.  To Dean he had never been more beautiful, and that was saying something.

The ache in Dean’s cock was what finally dragged him out of the almost trance-like state he’d slipped into in the midst of eating his brother out, his mind having taken a back seat to the rhythmic motions of his efforts in giving Sam all the pleasure he could possible take.  His dick was so thick and hard it felt ready to bust.  He couldn’t wait any longer and he could tell that Sam couldn’t either by the way his cock was drooling precome all over his stomach.

Dean straightened up on his knees, wiped a smear of spit off his chin, and took his own erection in his hand.  “You ready, Sammy?  You sure about this?”

Sammy’s eyes flew open and locked on Dean’s face, pupils blown so wide with lust that he almost looked possessed.  “God, yes.  Please, Dean. Need you now.”

It was music to Dean’s ears.  All he’d ever wanted in life was to hear his brother say those words.  To feel like Sammy wanted him and needed him in the same ways that Dean needed him.  He didn’t think he’d ever get tired of hearing it now that he knew it was actually true.

When he lined up the head of his cock with Sam’s hole and pressed it in, he felt like he was going to come right then and there.  Like he was some goddamn teenager instead of a full grown man.  Tight, wet, and warm, it was so fucking good he couldn’t hold back a deep groan of appreciation.  But what surprised him the most was in that moment it wasn’t just about the physical.  What was really turning his crank was knowing that the gorgeous body that was enveloping him like a second skin belonged to Sam; his Sammy.  His whole reason for being.  That kicked every sensation he felt over from hot straight to fucking nuclear.

“Yes!” Sam cried, his voice thin on the raw edge of need. “Fuck, yes! Come on, Dean.  More.”

Dean nodded dumbly, struggling to get himself under control.  He sank down, slipping deep inside the tight heat of Sam’s body in a long slow drag.  When he finally bottomed out, balls flush with Sam’s ass he let out the breath he’d been holding in a big rush of air.  “Holy shit,” he said.  Sam was practically bent in half under his weight but thankfully his brother was a big guy and Dean knew he could take it.  Still he couldn’t help asking, “You okay?”

Sam answered him by letting go of his right knee, grabbing the back of Dean’s head and pulling him down into a searing kiss.  When their mouths parted Sam held him there, barely an inch between them.  “Fuck me,” he whimpered, the most intimate of pleas whispered over the sensitive flesh of Dean’s lips.  “Come on, Dean, fuck me.  Been wanting this my whole life.  Haven’t you?”

“Yeah, Sammy.”  Dean kissed him, letting him know without words just how true that was.  He slid his forearms under Sam’s knees, hooking them into the crooks of his elbows, and ground his hips down.

Sam moaned against his lips.  Now that Dean was holding his legs up and his own hands were free to roam, he clutched at the back of Dean’s shoulders, digging half-moon marks into the flesh with his fingernails as Dean thrust into him.

“Jesus.  You feel so fucking good,” Dean panted.  He rested his forehead against Sam’s, pumping his hips and rutting his cock as deep as he could get it.  It might have sounded like a cliché line straight out of a porn flick but he was just being honest.  He didn’t have enough braincells left to describe the sensations he felt in a more artful way.  Sam was taking him so good, tight little hole swallowing him up and clutching around him, practically milking his dick.  This is what Heaven was supposed to feel like.  Experimentally, he pulled almost all the way out and then sank all the way back in a few long slow thrusts, wanting Sam to feel every thick inch of it.

“Oh god,” Sam moaned.

“You like that, Sammy?”  Dean’s voice was little more than a murmur, filth sweetened by a tone that was intimate and erotic.  “Like feeling me fill you up?” He asked because he wanted to know, needed to know that Sam was loving this as much as he was.

Sam nodded, his head bobbing loosely.

“Tell me what you want,” Dean said, taking what would have been a demand and pitching it into a plea.  “I wanna make you feel good.”

“Deeper,” Sam responded, nearly begging.  “Want it deeper.”

Dean slid all the way home til he was balls deep inside his brother’s body.  “Like this?”

“Yes!” Sam cried.  “Right there.”

From the way Sam jolted when he thrust in, Dean could tell that he must be right up against his prostate.  He started rocking his hips in short hard pumps, hammering that spot over and over with the same deadly accuracy he used on all his intended targets.

Sam writhed underneath him, letting out punched little moans with each thrust.  Mindlessly he sank his teeth into the meat of Dean’s shoulder, gripping at Dean’s back and holding on for dear life.

“Fuck!” Dean cried, the bright pain of Sam’s love bite ratcheting up his pleasure to a whole new plane.  He could feel the tension in Sam’s body, knew he was right on the edge.  He drove himself faster, harder, pushing the limits of his self-control to give Sammy what he needed before it shattered completely.

Sam’s hand flew down between their bodies, grabbing his own cock and jerking himself off as Dean fucked his ass hard and fast.  “Yes! Oh fuck, Dean.  Yes.  Don’t stop.  Don’t stop.  I’m gonna come.”

“Yeah,” Dean moaned. “Yeah come on, Sammy.  Come for me.”

“Oh god. Oh god.” Sam cried out, jacking his cock in a blur of motion.  In seconds he was coming, his hole clamping down snugly on Dean’s cock, fluttering around him with every wave of pleasure that ripped through his body.

“Sammy!” Dean shouted as his own orgasm rocketed out from the base of his spine at the same time, slinging electric zings along the highways of his nervous system in every direction.

In that same moment there was a flash of blinding white light and a rush of heat.  It shone out through their eyes, their mouths, and every pore of their skin.  With it came a sudden boom like a thunderclap, shaking just about everything in the room that wasn’t nailed down with the force of its vibrations.  It was a burst of pure energy exploding outward from two heavenly bodies locked in the highest reaches of ecstasy.  The products of soulmates and then soulmates themselves, the power they shared in their union was beyond measure.  It was too much for either one of their minds to handle, the limitations of their former reality still too fresh in their consciousnesses to process it.  The light faded out and as soon as it was gone they both passed out in a heap, completely spent down to their very souls.

Some time later, Dean came to and opened his eyes.  Sam’s face was several inches away from his, relaxed and peaceful almost like he was just sleeping.  Dean realized that he was lying on his side, apparently having rolled off of Sam when he’d blacked out.  His whole body was still buzzing pleasantly in the afterglow of whatever the hell had just happened to them and he didn’t think he could move even if he wanted to.  
“Sammy?” he rasped groggily. “You okay?”

Sam’s eyes flickered open, taking a second to focus.  He blinked a few times, looking at Dean in confusion.  “Dean? What happened?”

“I don’t know but it was awesome,” Dean said, chuckling weakly.  “How do you feel?”

“Like I got blown up.” Sam dragged a hand through the sex-tangled mess of his hair.  “But in a good way.  If that makes any sense.”

“Yeah, me too.” Dean sighed happily.  He didn’t think he’d ever felt so good in his life.  Whole and sated and not wanting for a goddamn thing other than what he had lying right next to him.

“Dean?”

“What?”

“You think we’re going to be okay?” Sam asked, a healthy dose of uncertainty in his voice.

Dean knew what he was getting at.  He couldn’t really blame Sam for having his doubts either.  This was a huge step for both of them.  They’d been through more than most people could ever dream of together but it hadn’t exactly been marshmallows and lollipops even when one of them wasn’t getting stabbed or possessed.  They were both stubborn as mules when they wanted to be and they argued almost more than they actually talked some days.  Throwing sex into the mix would surely complicate things even more, if that were at all possible.  There was no going halfway about this either.  There’d be no pre-dawn walks of shame afterward or screening Sam’s calls.  If this journey had shown them anything it was exactly how much they really were to each other.  Brothers, best friends, partners, and soulmates.  Relationships didn’t get more committed than theirs already was, but now they’d managed to surpass even that.

It was no secret that Dean didn’t have the best track record with the whole commitment thing.  Sam would have had to been blind and dumb not to pick that up after a lifetime spent in each other’s pockets and he wasn’t either one of those things.  However, what Sam didn’t seem to realize; what he revealed to Dean by even having to ask the question, was that he’d never fully understood why.  The reason why Dean normally preferred 'sex' and 'feelings' to be as separate as Church and State was because he knew whatever kind of relationship he got into he’d inevitably have to call off.  He was already one-hundred-percent committed to one person; had been his whole life, and no one else could ever stand a chance.  When it came down to it, Dean’s heart had always only belonged to Sam.

“We’re gonna be just fine, Sammy.”  Dean rolled onto his stomach, locking eyes with Sam’s so that his brother could see for himself that he meant every word.  “You don’t have anything to worry about anymore, especially not about me and you.  There’s no one I’d rather spend eternity with.  Believe me, right now in this moment I’m exactly where I want to be.”

Sam smiled, his eyes glistening.  “Me too.”

Pleased to hear it, Dean grinned, leaned closer and kissed him soundly on the lips.  “Soon as we’re decent I’m going to take that old watch and wind it down til it stops.  That’ll call Cas’s feathery ass over here and then we can make this thing official.”

“Sound good,” Sam replied happily.

Sated and content down to the very fiber of his being, Dean settled down against his pillow, one arm draped over the small of Sam’s waist.  He might not need sleep anymore but it was a nice feeling to just close his eyes and let his mind and his body rest be at ease for a while.  It wasn’t long before Sam’s fingertips were gently carding through his hair.  It was strange not to hear the sound of his brother’s heartbeat or to feel the ebb and tide of his breath.  They were small things, easy to take for granted until they were gone.  However, the loss of them was nothing in comparison to what he’d been given in return.  He had safety.  He had comfort.  And most of all, he had love.

Maybe Heaven wasn’t so bad after all.

  
~The End~


End file.
